What will happen to San Onofre's spent fuel?

July 15, 2013

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 12:28 p.m.

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The San Onofre nuclear power plants are shutting down and permanent removal of all major radioactive components – reactor vessels, steam generators, decades-worth of spent nuclear fuel – can take up to 60 years and cost billions.

This summer, hot fuel from the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station will be removed from one of its now-dormant reactors and submerged in a spent fuel pool – a milestone event triggering the end of the plant's operating license, and the beginning of its "possession" license.

The issue before majority owner Southern California Edison will cease to be one of running reactors safely, and begin to be one of dismantling them safely, eventually returning the ocean-view, Navy-owned land to more mundane uses.

That will involve permanent removal of all major radioactive components – reactor vessels, steam generators, decades-worth of spent nuclear fuel – that can take up to 60 years and cost billions.

SCE has until June 2015 to submit a detailed decommissioning plan to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Attention now turns more pointedly to the thorny question of what will become of the tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste that have been building up on site since San Onofre's first reactor began splitting atoms more than 40 years ago.

The federal government promised to take care of this rather important detail decades ago – for San Onofre and all commercial nuclear power plants – and has been requiring consumers like you to pay for permanent storage of nuclear waste since the 1980s, even though it has failed to permanently dispose of a single ounce of spent nuclear fuel.

While the reactors were humming, SCE's customers paid about $16 million a year into the federal Nuclear Waste Fund – which is a 10th of a cent for each kilowatt hour generated. All told, Southern Californians have pumped close to a half-billion dollars into this fund, for a service the federal government has never provided, and isn't even close to providing.

The Nuclear Waste Fund has swelled to $30 billion – and now earns about twice as much in interest ($1.3 billion a year) as it collects from the customers of utilities operating nuclear plants ($750 million a year) – to fund this non-existent service.

To those who live in the shadows of San Onofre's domes, it's maddening.

"One thing our community is 99.9 percent united around is that the federal government needs to step up and live up to its obligations to dispose of this waste in a safe manner," San Clemente City Councilman Tim Brown said.

"It doesn't belong at San Onofre. On-site storage was never supposed to be a long-term solution. It's difficult, because I don't even see a plan at the federal level that would give me any degree of comfort that it's being taken seriously. But around here, everyone is unanimous that something has to be done."

BEFORE THE MOON WALK

San Onofre's first reactor, Unit 1, went online in 1968, the year before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. Unit 2 fired up in 1983, and Unit 3 in 1984, during Ronald Reagan's first term in office.

The first reactor shut down in 1992, after 24 years of generating electricity. Too expensive to upgrade. Units 2 and 3 went offline last year, after tremendous tube wear was spotted in its nearly brand-new steam generators. Too much uncertainty to pursue restart. Both reactors had been splitting atoms for about 30 years.

That's 43 years of nuclear power production. And the overwhelming majority of the spent fuel produced over the decades is still sitting there, at San Onofre, just a few miles south of San Clemente. According to SCE:

About 2,550 spent fuel assemblies are cooling in enclosed, steel-lined concrete pools filled with water – otherwise known as "spent fuel pools." They remain there for about five years.

1,200 or so spent fuel assemblies are entombed in sealed stainless steel canisters housed in reinforced concrete – otherwise known as "dry cask storage." That's a temporary solution that can be used for up to 60 years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says.

And 270 spent fuel assemblies were shipped to a plant operated by General Electric in Morris, Ill.

That's about 1,400 tons of spent fuel. All of it stored safely and securely, SCE says.

But not permanently. Sooner or later, the stuff has to go somewhere.

"Spent nuclear fuel ... is one of the most hazardous substances created by humans," the U.S. General Accounting Office noted in an April report. "Commercial reactors have generated nearly 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel, which is currently stored at 75 reactor sites in 33 states, and this inventory is expected to more than double by 2055."

This stuff was supposed to end up at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where $10 billion has been spent to research and license a permanent repository. But Nevada objected – who wants the nation's nuclear waste in his back yard? – and the Obama administration put the brakes on Yucca in 2010. There's a new plan kicking around, but the soonest a permanent storage facility could open is in 2048, according to a General Accounting Office report released in April.

EXPENSIVE PARALYSIS

The federal government's paralysis is costing taxpayers big money.

Once upon a time in the last century, nuclear power was considered the future. To encourage its development, the federal government passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, promising to accept and dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste for commercial operators by Jan. 31, 1998. In return, the customers using that electricity would make quarterly payments into the aforementioned Nuclear Waste Fund, to cover the costs of constructing and operating a permanent waste repository.

SCE signed its contract with the U.S. Department of Energy in 1983. Since then, it has paid about $471 million into the Nuclear Waste Fund.

When 1998 came and went with no sign of permanent storage in sight, SCE and other nuclear plant operators had to come up with Plan B. So in 2001, SCE began constructing the dry storage facilities, which has cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Some 80 lawsuits have been filed by utility companies against the federal government to recover damages resulting from the delay. By the end of 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy had paid out $2.6 billion in damages to utility companies, and it faces another $19.7 billion in liabilities through 2020, according to the GAO.

But that's not even close to the end of it. After 2020, those liabilities could cost another half-billion a year, every year, until the federal government accepts the waste, the GAO said.

SCE was one of the utility companies that sued. In 2011, it was awarded $142.4 million in damages for the costs of building, staffing and maintaining temporary storage – but its suit involved costs only through 2005. It has filed a second suit seeking another $98 million for costs incurred from 2005 to 2010, and plans to file an additional case in the future, depending on a number of factors, spokeswoman Maureen Brown said.

Nationwide, about 78 percent of spent fuel resides in spent fuel pools at commercial reactors; the other 22 percent rests in dry storage, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry group.

For how much longer?

"San Clemente has been vocal about moving nuclear waste to a national repository. Our city was promised this when SONGS was built," City Councilwoman Lori Donchak wrote in an email.

Donchak points to the findings of a blue-ribbon commission on America's nuclear future, created by the president to push past the paralysis of Yucca Mountain. It urged the creation of secure interim storage sites, and then permanent disposal deep below the Earth's surface in one or more geologic disposals.

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